World's first baby born using uterus transplant from dead donor

The girl born in the Brazilian case was delivered via caesarean section at 35 weeks and three days, and weighed 2,550 grams, the case study said.

After the recipient's womb and ovarian are functioning, the embryos are transplanted into her uterus - generally at least one year after the transplant.

The baby girl was born almost a year ago to a 32-year-old woman who wasn't born with a uterus, according to the reportdetailed in the medical journal Lancet on Tuesday. Seven months after the transplant, doctors transferred an embryo made via in-vitro fertilization from the woman's egg and her husband's sperm into her womb.

The donor was a 45-year-old woman who died of subarachnoid haemorrhage - a type of stroke involving bleeding on the surface of the brain. Currently, only 10 known cases of uterus transplants from deceased donors exist, but all had failed to produce a live birth.

Eleven previous births have used a transplanted womb, but those were from a living donor.

The woman, 32, was initially scared of the procedure, said Dr. Dani Ejzenberg, who is the transplant team's lead doctor at the University of Sao Paulo School of Medicine, as AP reported.

The current need for live donors "is a major limitation as donors are rare, typically being willing and eligible family members or close friends", Dr Ejzenberg said.

"It enables use of a much wider potential donor population, applies lower costs and avoids live donors' surgical risks", Saso stated. He traveled to Sweden to learn from doctors there who have the most experience with uterine transplantation.

Performed in 2016 in Brazil, the transplant could provide new hope to thousands of women who are unable to have children due to uterine problems. Likewise, the mother's health required months of ongoing monitoring to ensure that she didn't suffer any adverse effects from having the uterus transplanted and then later removed.

He said any doubts he had about the potential importance of uterus transplants were erased after meeting the mother of the first baby born after a live donor uterus transplant.

In 2016, doctors at the Cleveland Clinic in OH transplanted a uterus from a deceased donor, but it failed after an infection developed. But according to the authors, they are the first to have accomplished it with a uterus from a deceased donor (there was a documented attempt in 2011, but the pregnancy ended in miscarriage).

The donated uterus was removed during the C-section and the woman's wound healed well, the researchers say. Two more transplants from deceased patients are planned as part of the Brazilian study.

Professor Lois Salamonsen, research group head of endometrial remodelling and Adjunct Professor at Monash University's Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology said she had received a few calls form Australian women over the years asking why uterine transplantation wasn't done in Australia.

In the end, they held off an additional month after tests suggested the lining of the donor uterus wasn't quite thick enough to support implantation. And it's possible that patients won't need as many immunosuppressants as they now receive to stave off organ rejection.